


standing on the corner in a three piece suit

by Good_News_Everyone



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: But his mum thinks he is, Eggsy isn't a rent boy, Harry Hart Lives, Lack of Communication, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mother-Son Relationship, Shovel Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:27:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Good_News_Everyone/pseuds/Good_News_Everyone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>‘What’m I </em>s’posed<em> to think?’ Michelle wails. ‘You tell me you’re working at this tailors, but you ain’t got no skills in sewing and you ain’t never in the shop when I go by. You keep comin’ back hurt all over an’ you tell me you’re gettin’ in street fights, but I </em>seen <em>you fight, baby, and no street punk could do that kind of damage to you ‘less you let ‘im.’</em></p><p>Eggsy’s mum gets the wrong idea about his job.</p><p>5/12/15: Extra Hartwin epilogue added!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out rather darker than I expected. I was aiming for wacky misunderstandings, and instead I wound up with….whatever this is.
> 
> (Writing fanfic on a family computer, yeah, that's not a terrible idea or anything, especially when I'm meant to be STUDYING, but maybe if I can get some of these fics out they'll stop taking up brain space.)

~

 

**One**

 

Here’s the thing most people don’t get about Michelle; just ‘cause she knows when to keep her mouth shut don’t mean she’s bloody stupid. She ain’t claiming to be the next Einstein or anything - barely scraped through high school as it was, even before she had to drop out in Sixth Form 'cos little Eggsy started making his presence known - but she’s got eyes, and she’s smart enough to put two and two together.

But it also means she’s smart enough to know the old line about gift horses and how you ain’t meant to look ‘em in the mouth, so when Eggsy shows up at the Prince in a suit that looks like it cost more than their month’s rent and offers her and Daisy a better life, away from the grit and grime of the estate, Michelle doesn’t question how the fuck a _tailor_ (even a posh one in Savile Row) can afford to pay his newest shop-boy enough to afford a three-bedroom in the nice part of town. Honestly, at the time she’s just too terrifyingly relieved at the thought of being able to leave behind Dean, who came back to the flat on V-Day with his pockets full of spent cartridges and sleeves soaked to the elbows in other peoples’ blood.

For the same reason, she doesn’t really think too deeply about the efficient, vicious way Eggsy beats up Dean and his boys when they try to stop her leaving (other than to privately thank the judge who sentenced Eggsy after he stole Rotti’s car, because whatever they did at that military camp he got sent to apparently sharpened Eggsy’s already considerable brawling skills into a kind of beautiful, well-orchestrated ballet of violence).

It shouldn’t matter. Eggsy’s a tailor, now. It’s a steady, settled job, away from bar-room brawls and sidewalk scuffles, and there shouldn’t be any call for him to be out breaking people’s faces with his fists.

And yet, somehow, her boy keeps getting himself in trouble.

 

~

 

Tailors travel a lot, apparently – she don’t really understand it all, but there’s trips to buy fabric and patterns, and trips to scout new designs, and trips to see clients too posh to come to them, and it all adds up to Eggsy being away more often than not. Usually he heads out in a crisply pressed suit and vest, sometimes in his old chav gear, and occasionally in the kind of outfit that makes Michelle want to go _You ain’t leaving the house dressed like that, young man_ , but the eyeliner-and-leather look is what passes for high fashion these days accordin’ to the papers, so maybe that’s what he has to wear to fit in with that crowd.

However he leaves, though, he always seems to come back scraped around the edges. Sometimes it’s barely anythin’ – a graze high on one cheek, a shallow scratch along his forearm – and sometimes it’s much, much worse.

‘I’m ‘ome!’ she hears Eggsy call from the front door one evening, just as she’s washing up the last of the dinner dishes. She pokes her head out into the hallway to greet him (he’s been gone for a week, this time, off somewhere in Italy) but the words dry up in her mouth at the sight of him.

‘What _happened_ to you, love?’

‘S’ nothing,’ Eggsy shrugs, carefully sliding his duffel off his uninjured shoulder. His left arm is in a sling and the bandages neatly applied to his scalp don’t hide the impressive goose egg or the mottled bruises extending down the side of his neck. ‘Local lad didn’t like me making a pass at one of his mates, so he took a swing. I didn’t like _‘im_ spoilin’ my chances, so I took one back. Things went to shit pretty fast after that.’

He tries to grin at her then winces as his lip splits, fresh blood trickling down his chin. Michelle reaches out and wipes it away, the same way she used to when he was small and getting picked on at the playground for not havin’ a dad.

She doesn’t ask how an ordinary thug managed to land a hit on Eggsy when she’s seen him take out five blokes in seconds without breaking a sweat. She wonders it, though.

‘I’m fine, Mum, don’t fuss,’ Eggsy says, pulling away. ‘I’ll come down get dinner in a bit, yeah?’ and with that, he’s disappearing up the stairs to his room.

Michelle stands in the hallway, gazing down at the smear of blood across her fingers, and a feeling of unease curls deep in her stomach.

She finds Eggsy’s shirt in the laundry hamper later that night. The left sleeve has been slashed with something sharp and clumsily sewn up with off-coloured thread, and a large bloodstain hasn’t quite washed out of the front. She stares at it for a long moment, then finally throws it into the machine and tells herself firmly that it’s nothing.

 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to write a Michelle-centric fic because she’s a significant motivating factor for Eggsy in the movie, and yet we don’t get much insight into her as a person. So I thought I’d dip into her thoughts about the events of the movie and Eggsy’s new profession a bit.
> 
> Michelle being a teenage mother is part canon and part conjecture. The Kingsman candidates all appear to be in their early to mid twenties at most, so for Lee to already have a 7 year old son they must have had him young. Corroborating that is the fact that Eggsy is stated to be 24 at the time of the movie, while his sister appears about 1-2 years old - an age difference of about 22 years. If Michelle was around 40 when she was born (the upper end of normal), she'd have been at most 18 when she had Eggsy.
> 
> Title is from [‘The Record’s Flawed’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEgB2ra5su8) by the Delta Riggs.
> 
> (I've been stuck on this fic for a while, so I figured I'd just start posting what I have and hopefully this will motivate me to finish it. Aiming for a new chapter every week.)


	2. Chapter 2

**~**

 

**Two**

 

'You really should tell her, you know.'

Michelle's heading back to her room after putting Daisy down for the night, but she pauses at the sound of Roxy's voice filtering through the cracked door of Eggsy's bedroom.

Michelle likes Roxy a lot. The girl is whip-smart and proper gorgeous and perfectly happy to take Eggsy down a peg or two whenever he's getting a bit full of himself. Eggsy, on his part, talks to Roxy with the kind of affectionate admiration she ain’t often seen him show birds his age, and if she weren't well aware that her baby boy is bent as a paperclip (occasional one-night stands aside), she'd've left a box of condoms and the name of a good jeweller on his nightstand long ago.

(She'd asked Roxy, once, why a girl like her was working in the backroom of a stuffy old tailors’ rather than off being some kind of cancer-curing supermodel rocket scientist. Roxy'd just smiled and shrugged and said somethin' about her uncle wanting her in the family business before deftly changing the subject.)

'You know I can't, Rox,' Eggsy says, sounding resigned, as if this is a conversation they've had many times before. 'It's risky work, it ain't safe for Mum to know about.'

'It's  _precisely_  because it's risky work that she deserves to know,' Roxy retorts. 'Merlin looks out for us as best he can, but people still get hurt. People  _die_. Look at what happened to Har-'

'- _Don't_ ,' Eggsy interrupts, his voice raw and pained in a way that Michelle's never heard before.

'Sorry,' Roxy says softly, and is quiet for a moment. 'But that could have been any one of us, Eggsy, and you know it. And could be again, any day of the week. Doesn't she deserve to at least know what you're doing out there, rather than finding out when Merlin or one of the others shows up at her door?'

There's a long moment of silence. Michelle shifts from foot to foot, knowing she shouldn't be listening to this.

'I can't put that kind of burden on ‘er, Rox,' Eggsy finally admits, his voice low. 'Not when she ‘ad to bring me up alone after what happened to Dad. And then after all that shit that went down with Dean - Mum's had to deal with too much in 'er life already, I'm not addin' to that.'

Michelle feels a sharp stab of guilt. Hard as it'd been raising a young boy alone, she'd tried to shield Eggsy from the worst of it. Dean, though - Dean she couldn’t blame on anyone but herself. He’d been charming enough to start, and she’d been alone near on ten years, and if he weren’t ever quite as sweet and kind and thoughtful as her husband had been – well.

No one would ever be as good as Lee, would they?

She turns and slips away, not wanting to hear the rest of their conversation, and tries to quell the nagging voice in her head that wants to know  _Exactly what about workin' in a bloody_ tailor shop _is so fuckin' risky?_

 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter, decided to post a little early.
> 
> I handwaved Roxy calling Michelle on V-Day – let’s say she assumes because Roxy is posh she knows the kind of high up people who’d get advance warnings on this sort of thing.
> 
> Like a lot of people, it’s my headcanon that Percival is somehow related to Roxy, since given how conservative Kingsman was it would’ve been unusual to have proposed a female candidate unless you were very close to/familiar with her and her abilities.


	3. Chapter 3

~

 

**Three**

 

There ain’t a whole lot of things Michelle misses about living on the estate, but the friends she left behind definitely qualify. Rough as the place’d been, there'd been good hearts in among the mob, women who'd helped keep her on her feet by bringing over Tupperwares of food in tough times or watching Eggsy when she was working yet another late shift down at the factory.

She could’ve just ditched 'em when she’d lucked into a better life – she’d seen it before, with girls who’d caught a rich bloke’s eye and left without so much as a backwards glance – but Michelle ain’t ever been that kind of person. 

She tried inviting them all to the townhouse once but they all got fidgety and uncomfortable in the posh dining room, talking a little too loud and shooting occasional nervous, sidelong glances at her, as if she might suddenly sprout a twinset and pearls and have 'em chased off her property. And then Jo'd gone to use the bog and found that bloody stuffed dog Eggsy insisted on keeping in there and screamed fit to bring the roof off. So now instead every weekend she takes them to a restaurant near the estate, a place her and Lee used to go for a birthday treat back in the day, and she lets 'em laugh and gossip and eat and drink all the sangria they want, and then when they're all a little tipsy she quietly pays the bill without letting any of 'em see.

Which is all a pretty long-winded way of explaining how she comes to be back at the estate, chatting on a balcony with some of the girls while they wait for Suze (who's always bloody late), when she sees a man walking down the street with Roxy hanging off his arm.

Only it ain't Roxy. For one thing, Michelle knows that Roxy's off in Germany somewhere on a buying trip for the shop. For two, Roxy might not act it with her or Daze or Eggsy but she was born posh as fuck and she dresses like it, elegant and classy to a fault.

There are a lot of words Michelle could use to describe this girl tottering down the street in her eight-inch heels, but classy ain’t one of them. Her makeup is tastelessly bright, her jewellery loud and flashy, and her bright pink bra is visible through her too-small, too-thin white shirt. The bloke matches her, heavy gold chain over a shiny red bomber jacket, leering at the girl from under a Burberry snapback.

'Shelly?' a voice says, and Michelle startles slightly to find the others looking at her oddly.

'Friend of yours, then?' Lissa says, nodding towards the couple. They're pressed against a wall now, the man's hand wandering up under the edge of the girl’s barely-there miniskirt. She giggles and slaps his hand away playfully.

'Nah,' says Michelle, tearing her gaze away. 'Thought she was someone I knew, but she ain't.' She looks at the tense faces all around her. 'What's goin' on?'

'I ain't seen her before, but I def’nitely know  _'im_ ,' Maz says. Her mouth compresses into a thin line. 'That's one o' Bennie Fraser's boys, there.'

'You ain't been around enough to know, Shelly,' says Jo. 'The Frasers've been stepping up their game lately. He runs most of the dealers this end of town, now. Forced out the smaller blokes. They either joined him, or-' She draws her index finger across her throat.

'Word is they got in with some of the big cartels overseas,' says Maz, voice hushed. 'No one round here'll cross 'em - they're all scared shitless. One of his pushers was scammin' him, and Bennie caught wind. They found him floatin' in the river the next day. 'Nother one was plannin' to knock Bennie off and take over. They still ain't found all of  _him_  yet.'

'Why hasn't-' Michelle begins, then shuts her mouth. Christ, she really has been away too long, she was actually going to ask  _Why hasn't anyone called the cops_?  She knows why. Too many people round here’ve got something to hide, and once the flatfoots start pokin’ around the estate, you can’t guarantee that someone you care about ain’t gonna be caught up in the mess. A brother, a husband… a son.

'If that girl _is_  some'un you know, you might wanna tell her to get away before Fraser's boy gets bored wiv' her,' Lissa says. 'They got a bad habit of passin' girls around their friends after they're done with 'em. Seen a few of 'em at the hospital after. It ain't pretty.'

Suze turns up just then in a flurry of scarves and apologies, and the tension is broken, conversation turning quickly to talk of jobs and families. The exchange sits in the back of Michelle's mind uncomfortably, though, like a pebble in the toe of a shoe.

About a week afterwards she's babysitting over at Jo's flat, making herself a cuppa in the kitchen while Daisy and Jo's Tommy doze on the ratty couch, snoring in the curious snuffly way of infants. She’s gazing idly out at the streetlight-punctuated darkness, her mind elsewhere, when a furtive movement catches her eye.

It's the girl she saw before, Roxy's double, limping down the street with her stilettos in one hand.  _Too much dancin’,_  thinks Michelle, but then the girl pauses briefly under the streetlight and Michelle catches her breath.

The left side of the girl's face is bruised and swollen, a truly impressive black eye blooming. There is blood crusted liberally down the front of her torn shirt and rings of bruises circle her upper arms where someone’s grabbed her roughly. She swipes ineffectually at a trickle of fresh blood dripping down one thigh with her hand, and red droplets splatter on the sidewalk.

Michelle wavers, wanting to go to her aid but unwilling to leave the two children alone in the apartment. It turns out to be moot; a sleek black car pulls up to the sidewalk not moments after. The Roxy-look-alike gets in and it pulls away smoothly, leaving no evidence of her presence but the splashes of red already sinking into the rough concrete.

It's Daisy's birthday party a few days later. Roxy turns up, looking as put together as ever, hands Daisy an enormous stuffed toy, and answers questions about her trip smilingly and without any hint of guile. But Michelle, who knows the signs, spots the faint puffiness around her left eye and the way she's careful never to touch her face, so she doesn't disturb the makeup she's plastered on more thickly than usual.

This is when Michelle really starts to worry.

 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens (dun dun DUUUNN!). Don’t worry, the blood’s not Roxy’s, she’s too badass for that.  
> Next chapter should be up in a few days! Just gotta finish tweaking it a bit.


	4. Chapter 4

~

 

**Four**

 

Given how thin Eggsy’s excuses are, Michelle thinks, she really should’ve started gettin’ suspicious a lot earlier. Now she’s paying attention, she notices the small cracks in the façade – a multitude of little things, like the time she heard waves crashing in the background when Eggsy was meant to be in Geneva, or the time he said he was flyin’ to Sweden even though a volcano’d stopped all air traffic, or the time he seemed oddly jetlagged from a trip to Scotland and there was red sand in his shoes - and she ain’t sure how she missed it before. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that, she supposes.

She follows him to the tailors’ one morning. Loiters against a lamp-post across the street, face half-hidden by her winter coat, and watches as he strolls into the shop, winks at the old bloke manning the counter, and disappears into one of the dressing rooms.

He doesn’t come out again for the next ten hours.

By the time she gives up and drags her half-frozen arse home, he’s already beaten her back to the townhouse, bouncing Daisy on his lap and chatting easily with Lissa about the snobbish, pretentious customers he’s had to deal with that day. There’s smudges of dirt on the knees of his suit.

She keeps an eye out for Roxy at the council estate, but she never sees the girl around there again. She wonders if it’s because the Frasers are gone now - someone found the well-ventilated bodies of most of Bennie’s crew in one of their dens, a few days after Michelle saw Roxy get picked up by that car, and the remnants got swept up by some government agency or other. No one seems to particularly miss them.

 

~

 

Eggsy spends a lot of time alone in his room when he’s home, and he’s pretty careful about keeping it locked – Michelle can count on one hand the number of times she’s been inside since they moved in. Before this, she’d chalked it up him enjoying the newfound privacy, which’d been a rare commodity in the thin-walled council apartments where all your neighbours knew when you ate and fought and fucked. Now, she doesn’t know what to think.

Which is why it comes as a surprise when she walks past Eggsy’s room one day to find the door thrown wide open, clothes strewn all about the place, and Eggsy pacing the floor, chalk white, gesticulating wildly with the hand not holding a phone to his ear.

‘-thought he was _dead_ ,’ Eggsy says, dragging a shirt over his head with his free hand. He twists a little as he wrestles it on, and Michelle’s breath catches as the light throws a set of raised, jagged scars across his back and shoulders into sharp relief.

‘Are you sure I should be the one doin’ this?’ Eggsy says, his voice cracking on the last words. Her boy is _shaking_. ‘He was pretty angry at me, the last time we –‘ His breath hitches. ‘Yeah. Yeah, no, if he wants me, I’ll go. Fuck, the house. He’ll want the house back, won’t he? Shit – no, you’re right, course, we’ll sort this after everyone’s back safe – yeah. Cheers, Merlin. Bye.’

He hangs up the phone and throws it into his duffel, frenziedly piling clothes in on top of it, then halts abruptly as he catches sight of Michelle in the doorway. ‘Mum,’ he says, making a visible effort to calm himself, and swallows. ‘How long’ve you been standing there?’

‘Not long,’ she says, nodding towards the haphazardly-packed bag. ‘You off again, then?’

Eggsy laughs wildly and scrubs his hands through his hair. ‘Yeah,’ he says, sounding a bit crazed. ‘Yeah, no, it’s – there’s a – a client, in Kentucky. An’ we thought we’d lost him, after V-Day? But it turns out we didn’t. And they want me to go see him – Mum, I have to go-‘

And he turns and he’s leaving again, just like all those times before, and she doesn’t know where he’s going or what state he’ll be in when he comes back, and she remembers the last time Lee left - just the same way, without her knowing where or why - and came back in a box.

(‘ _People die_ ,’ Roxy’s voice says in her head, her pretty face battered and disfigured.)

She grabs him without even thinking, latching on to his arm with both hands, using her full weight to drag him back from the door. Eggsy tries to pull away from her, but she digs her heels in and hooks her nails into his clothes. Something is different about this trip, something that’s rattled Eggsy badly, and she’s scared that if she lets him go now it’ll be the last time she does.

‘Mum,’ Eggsy says, with an undertone of urgency, trying to shake her away. ‘I’ve gotta go, I got this job-‘

‘Job my arse,’ Michelle interrupts fiercely. ‘I don’t know much about tailors, but I know you ain’t one.’

She feels him tense under her hands, and he turns to her, a guilty look on his face. ‘Mum,’ he says, ‘I swear, I was gonna tell you eventually-‘

‘- I _know_ ,’ she interrupts him again. ‘An’ I know that you just wanted to take care of me ‘n Daisy, babes, same as you always have, but not like this, nothin’s worth you havin’ to sell your arse to men who beat you and smack you around an’ send you back home all bruised an’ bloody-‘

‘What,' Eggsy says.

'-and you might think it's better than Smith Street like this, with some posh guy looking out for his, his assets, but this business chews up young fit things like you ‘n Roxy and spits them out, and there’s so many more things you could do with your life, baby – we’ll get by somehow, I don’t care about the fancy house, or any of it, I just want you and Daze to be safe-‘

‘Wait, wait,’ says Eggsy, goggling at her incredulously. ‘You think that I got all o’ this – the suits an’ the house an’ all – by workin’ as some kind of high priced _rent-boy_?’

‘What am I _s’posed_ to think?’ Michelle wails, tears springing to her eyes as her control finally snaps. ‘You tell me you’re working at this tailors, but you ain’t got no skills in sewing and you ain’t never in the shop when I go by. You keep comin’ back hurt all over an’ you tell me you’re gettin’ in street fights, but I _seen_ you fight, baby, and no street punk could do that kind of damage to you ‘less you let ‘im.’ She swallows painfully. ‘I saw Roxy that week she was meant ta be in Munich, all tarted up and hangin’ all over a bloke that everyone _knows_ roughs up ‘is girls… and I saw what she looked like after, too. Is that what happened, all those times they sent you off ta meet with _clients_ and you came back with bruises all over?’

Eggsy looks torn. His gaze wavers, going from her to the door and back again.

Finally, he pulls away from her loosened grasp. Michelle makes a pained noise, but he doesn’t leave, just takes her gently by the arm and leads her into the kitchen. He sits her down at the table, makes her a cup of tea, then sits down across from her and takes her hands in his.

'Mum,' he says, 'I think it’s time I came clean ‘bout a few things.'

 

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No prizes for guessing who Merlin is calling about. :D


	5. Chapter 5

~

 

**Five**

 

‘I’m ‘ome!’ Michelle hears Eggsy shout from the front doorway, and she smiles. 

‘In the front room, babes,’ she calls. ‘Welcome back. How was Syria?’

‘Hot an’ sandy, same as Yemen before that, an’ Iraq before that,’ Eggsy says, ambling into the room and immediately flopping down on one of the overstuffed chairs. ‘I think Merlin’s still paying me back for ditchin’ my comms after that mission in Nice to hit the beach for a week.’

‘Don’t seem like you learned your lesson,’ Michelle says dryly. ‘Roxy told me you were meant t’be back from this mission three days ago.’

Eggsy gives her a wide-eyed, innocent look which doesn’t fool her in the slightest. He yawns, stretching his arms above his head, and Michelle catches a glimpse of dark bruises around his wrists as his cuffs fall back. Eggsy tracks her gaze and tries to pull his sleeve down, but she fixes him with a stern look, and he sighs and holds out his arm for inspection.

‘Oh, sweetheart,’ she tuts, looking at the distinctive thin ring of handcuff marks around Eggsy’s wrist. ‘I thought Percival was meant to be teachin’ you how to slip a pair of cuffs last month?’

Eggsy flushes beetroot red all the way to the tips of his ears. ‘Ah, he did,’ he mumbles. ‘This was, uh, it was sort of bait for a scene I was settin’.’

‘I noticed you were limpin’ a bit as you came in, too,’ Michelle says shrewdly. She frowns in mild disapproval. ‘I thought the whole point of having that Harry out on missions with you was so he could _stop_ you from gettin’ hurt. Do I need to ‘ave a talk with him about looking after my baby boy?’

Harry is still slightly wary around Michelle. Eggsy’d turned up with the man in tow a few days after their talk, explaining that Harry’d been the one who’d recruited him for Kingsman. Michelle’d recognised him immediately, screamed, cried, and then slapped him soundly across the face.

She still feels a bit bad about that. Least it hadn’t been the side with the eyepatch.

‘Don’t you worry, Mum, Harry takes _real_ good care of me,’ Eggsy says, grinning a little for some reason. He shifts in his chair and winces slightly. ‘Trust me on this one.’

‘Hmm,’ Michelle says, unconvinced. ‘At least tell me whoever roughed you up got a fuckin’ good seeing-to.’

Eggsy chokes slightly. ‘Ah, yeah,’ he wheezes. ‘I, uh, took care of that myself, matter o’ fact.’

‘Well, that’s the best I can hope for, I s’pose.’ She rises and drops a kiss on his head as she passes. ‘I’m gonna go get supper ready. You joinin’ us?’

‘Nah, eatin’ with Rox tonight, I promised I’d buy her dinner for coverin’ for me the last few days,’ Eggsy says. The doorbell trills, and he heaves himself out of his chair. ‘That’ll be her now.’

It is, indeed, Roxy, and she greets Eggsy with an affectionate slap upside the head. ‘I’ve been covering for your sorry arse since _Monday_ ,’ she informs him. ‘You’re late.’

‘Galahad’s got a reputation to maintain,’ he says blandly, and pulls her into a hug. ‘Good to see you again, Rox.’ He leans back a little and quirks an eyebrow. ‘Hear you’ve been busy since I saw you last. Word from the South America desk is that all the Fornosa cartel heads turned up mysteriously dead of acute lead poisonin’ last week.’

‘Lancelot has a reputation to maintain, too,’ she says, flashing a sharp, mischievous smile. ‘By the way, you have something just there-‘ She taps the side of her neck, and Eggsy flushes again and pulls his collar up quickly.

‘We’d, ah, we’d better get goin’,’ he says quickly. ‘Mum? We’re off-‘

‘Have a good time, you two,’ Michelle says, waving them away. ‘Oh, and Eggsy, love, I’m just gonna take your spare bullets out of your pockets before they go in the wash, yeah? Almost set the dryer on fire last time-’

‘Don’t go through my pockets!’ Eggsy yelps, waving his hands frantically. ‘Don’t – I have, um, stuff from the mission in there, I’ll just, just sort it out when I get home, yeah?’

‘You have the worst poker face in the history of mankind,’ Michelle hears Roxy say, _sotto voce_ , as they leave. ‘When are you planning to tell her _this_ time?’

‘Would _you_ wanna have this talk?’ Eggsy hisses as the door closes behind them. ‘I’m workin’ up to it, okay?’

Michelle frowns slightly, but puts it out of her head. Her boy is all grown up and saving the world, now, and while it may not be the _safest_ job in the world, he can take care of himself (and has a whole spy agency and a kick-arse best friend to back him up, besides). She doesn’t need to fret over him. Whatever it is, he’ll tell her when he’s ready. 

Besides, she thinks, after the whole super-spy thing, nothing’s gonna surprise her.

 

~

 

**End**

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For non-Brit speakers, ‘a good seeing-to’ can indicate either a severe beating, or a good hard shag. Guess which meaning Eggsy’s thinking of. Go on, guess.  
> Aaaand we’re done! Thank you to everyone who’s commented on or faved this fic - knowing that people were enjoying it was what motivated me to finish writing it. Internet hugs for erryone.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short epilogue inspired by everyone who wanted to see Michelle’s reaction to Eggsy dating Harry, and particularly by [this comment](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/43553828).
> 
> Also a stealth crossover! :D

~

**Coda**

  

' _Oh, thank Christ, you picked up_ ,’ Eggsy says, as soon as Harry puts the phone to his ear. ‘ _Please,_ please _tell me you ain’t at home right now_.’

‘In point of fact, I was just leaving for the shop,’ Harry says, wedging the phone between his ear and shoulder as he slips on his oxfords. ‘Is something the matter, darling?’

‘ _No, no, you can’t leave the house_ ,’ Eggsy says vehemently. ‘ _Look, if you’re home, you need to lock your doors an’ go upstairs and pretend like you’re not in, all right? I’ll come get you soon as the coast’s clear an’ we’ll run off to, I dunno, Mozambique or somethin’ till this all blows over.’_

Harry’s eyebrows climb towards his immaculately coiffed hairline. Eggsy’s not using any of Kingsman’s prearranged code phrases, so neither of them are under any immediate threat to life or limb, but he sounds uncommonly agitated nonetheless for someone who bulldozes his way through platoons of enemies on a regular basis.

‘Dearest boy, you know how much I adore you,’ Harry says, ‘so it comes from a place of caring when I say this: you sound stark raving bonkers right now, and I need you to take a deep breath, get a grip, and tell me what the fuck is going on.’

There’s a whoosh of air on the other end of the line as Eggsy exhales. ‘ _Right_ ,’ he says. ‘ _So the first thing I want to make clear is, this is all Roxy’s fuckin’ fault._ ’

‘How so?’ asks Harry, shrugging on his overcoat.

‘ _She brought that bloke she’s seeing over for dinner last month,_ ’ Eggsy says grouchily. ‘ _The one from MI6, Archie or Albert or something-_ ‘

 ‘-Alex-‘

‘- _right, an’ he’s just disgustingly soppy over her, an’ so Mum got it in her head that what I really need is to find a nice boy to make me as happy as Rox is_.’

‘I see,’ Harry said. ‘Well, I’m afraid I can’t help you there, darling, I no longer qualify as a boy and I _definitely_ don’t qualify as nice.’

‘ _Not even a little_ ,’ Eggsy says, his smugness somehow audible. ‘ _Anyway, she’s spent the last few weeks tryin’ to set me up with every single bloke she knows, an’ she ain’t being subtle about it, neither. First we were havin’ coffee, and she kept tryin’ to give the barista my number.  Then it was all ‘Suze’s nephew’s movin’ to London, love, why don’t you take a couple’a days to show him round? He’s an_ accountant _, y’know.’ An’ on, and on, and on. It’s driving me fuckin’_ mental _, Harry.’_

‘As amusing as your mother playing yenta is,’ Harry says as he opens his front door, ‘I’m not seeing how this translates into me voluntarily immuring myself for the next several days. So unless there’s something else-‘  

‘ _No, you don’t understand_ ,’ Eggsy says, and the urgency is back in his voice. ‘ _She set me up again today, right, with this teacher from Daisy’s school. She told me it was a parent-teacher conference! So I got home proper pissed at her, an’ I told her to lay off, I wasn’t lookin’ to meet anyone. And she was all ‘It don’t have to be anythin’ serious, babes, just go out an’ have some fun,’ an’ I just blurted out ‘Why? Ain’t like any of them are gonna be able to out-shag Harry,’ an’ long story short, she’s on her way over to have it out with you_ right now _.’_

Harry looks down into the unimpressed, glowering face of Michelle Unwin.

‘Ah,’ he says.

‘ _I prob’ly should’ve led with that bit, huh_.’

‘If I survive this, you and I are going to have a very serious talk about prioritising your reports,’ Harry mutters, and shoves the phone into his pocket. He squares his shoulders and faces Michelle with his most charming smile, internally quashing several ungentlemanly thoughts about potential escape routes.

As if she’s reading his mind, Michelle’s hand shoots out and grabs Harry by his hundred-pound silk tie, yanking him down so he’s nose-to-nose with her.

‘I ain’t gonna threaten to kill you if you hurt him,’ she says, voice low, ‘cause both of us know you could take ten of me with your hands tied behind your back and your good eye shut. I’m just gonna remind, you, Harry Hart, that I know where you live, I know where Eggsy keeps your spare key, and, most importantly, _I know when you ain’t home_. So if you ever break my boy’s heart, you might just come home one day to find someone’s taken all your fancy brandy, poured it over a pile of shredded suits and balled-up newspaper front pages, and _burned your fuckin’ house to the ground_.’

With that, she releases her hold on Harry’s tie and stomps back up the street towards the Unwin residence, leaving Harry gaping after her, completely lost for words.

‘ _Harry?’_ comes Eggsy’s voice uncertainly from his pocket, snapping him out of his trance, and he raises the phone to his ear again.

‘I think she’s warming up to me,’ he says mildly, and is rewarded with Eggsy’s slightly hysterical laughter.

 

~

**End (for real this time)**

**~**


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